Truex’s dream season comes down to one race

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR’s four championship contenders were seated elbow-to-elbow previewing their upcoming title race when they were asked to give one word to describe the season.

“Amazing,” Martin Truex Jr. said.

Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick both said the season was “long,” while Kyle Busch went with “trying.” But Truex? Well, he’s got nothing to complain about after a truly dominating season.

Truex goes into Sunday’s finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway as the clear favorite to win the title. He has a seriesbest seven wins, and six were at 1½-mile tracks. Homestead is a 1½-mile track.

He leads the series in nearly every meaningful statistic, and if the points earned all season weren’t reset for Sunday’s finale, he’d have already won his first Cup title.

“If it wasn’t set back at zero, we’d probably all be congratulating Martin right now,” Keselowski said. “But it is.”

So it’s a winner-takeall race, and everything Truex has built this season is on the line. He faces three former series champions, each of them looking for their second title.

With Truex such the clear favorite, it made for a quiet media day for the championship competitors. — except when Busch and Keselowski were asked why they have never squashed their rivalry.

Keselowski tried to downplay a feud. Busch didn’t mince words.

“Sometimes you just don’t like a guy, fact of the matter,” Busch said. “I never ran into Matt Kenseth, I don’t think Matt Kenseth ever ran into me, so there is a respect factor out there on the racetrack, and you certainly do a better job sometimes when you’re around some of those guys that you may or may not necessarily like. But as once a wise man told me, I think it was Chase Elliott, I race those like they race me.”

Elliott used that line last week to address his aggressive racing with Denny Hamlin that cost Hamlin a shot at the title. It was retaliation for Hamlin wrecking Elliott out of the lead at Martinsville earlier in the playoffs.

How aggressive can the contenders be Sunday to win the championship?

“I mean, I’m willing to try to go win the race,” Keselowski said. “When it comes down to the end of the race, I don’t think anyone really knows that answer until it’s right in front of them.”

Truex knew what the crowd wanted to hear.

“I’ll wreck any damn one of these three,” he joked. Then he was serious. “I’m going to race these guys just like I do every single week,” Truex said. “I have not thought about any desperation moves. I don’t plan on being in that position. I think a perfect scenario is to go out there and race them heads up and beat them fair and square. That’s how I approach racing. That’s how I plan on doing it Sunday.”